Surprisingly, through its built-in MagSafe 2 port the Quarter charging its 5,000mAh internal battery via the MacBook’s MagSafe wall charger takes under an hour. The company kindly provided me a review unit that I tested out over the past week, here’re my impressions.

Despite the fact that the Quarter is a crowdfunded project, it’s now well past its funding goal and ready for sale. So no, the Quarter isn’t a prototype as the first 1,000 units are being manufactured for international customers as we speak.

And if I may point out, it certainly feels and works a lot better than your typical crowdfunded gizmo that never leaves the prototyping stage or sees the light of day.

Stylish, sturdy design

Unlike many external battery packs that come in plastic enclosures, the Quarter is made from brushed aluminum to nicely match the overall silver aluminum aesthetic of Apple products. It uses the same material as Apple’s Mac notebooks.

The Quarter isa bit on the heavy side at 180 grams and is a ad wider and shorter than my iPhone 6s Plus, measuring in 137mm wide, 73mm tall and 12.5mm deep.

At the top, you’ll find a handy ledge and hole for clipping the Quarter to your backpack, key holder inside your messenger back and what not. On the back, there’s a built-in 3-Amp MagSafe port for fast-charging the power bank via Apple’s 45/60/85W MacBook wall chargers. A 1-Amp micro-USB port on the back lets you fill up the Quarter through any standard charger.

Of course, you’ll also find your full-sized USB port for charging an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, as well as other USB-based smartphones, tablets and other devices.

I especially like the Quarter’s buttonless design. Its four subtle indicator lights on the enclosure light up via a built-in LED when you shake or tap the device gently to give you a sense of how much power you have left.

It’s very cool design with an Apple-like touch that makes the Quarter all the more stylish and fun to use, in my personal opinion. On the inside, there are two lithium-ion polymer battery cores, each rated at 3.7V/2,500mAh.

Recharges itself 10x faster

That’s not a bogus claim: after depleting the Quarter completely, I charged it to full capacity in about 40 minutes using my MacBook Air’s 45-watt MagSafe wall adapter.

Compared with typical micro-USB-powered batteries, the Quarter has ten times faster charging. The device can get pretty hot during recharging because it uses eight times the power of ordinary juice packs.

Beaver assures me this is normal as they use synthetic graphite, a material with high heat conductivity, to keep its temperature below 104 degrees (40℃) while charging in a 77-degree Fahrenheit (25℃) room.

Actually, the Quarter should retain more than 70 percent of its nominal capacity even after 500 charging cycles, according to Beaver. Folks who don’t own a MacBook and are reluctant to purchase Apple’s pricey $79 MagSafe adapter can instead recharge their Quarter via a built-in micro-USB port.

Recharging via micro-USB occurs at normal speeds: it takes about 7 hours to fully charge it via a 5V/1A charger, like the 5-watt charger that came with your iPhone.

Charges your gear

After charging it via MagSafe for just fifteen minutes, the Quarter has enough juice to fully recharge a completely dead iPhone 5s, which is extremely impressive. Just plug in your iOS device via a Lightning-to-USB cable (or connect a non-Apple device via micro-USB) and shake (or tap) the Quarter to begin charging.

My iPhone 6s charged from zero juice to full capacity and there was still charge left in the Quarter. And I recharged my rusty old iPhone 6 Plus from dead to full in a little more than two hours.

All things considered, the Quarter has enough capacity to provide a full charge for your iPhone 6s Plus. After that, you’ll still have approximately one out of four LED bars left, which works out to about 25 percent capacity.

The Quarter won’t fully charge an iPad, however. I was able to charge my fully dead iPad Air to about sixty percent before the Quarter’s battery was exhausted. For those wondering, the Quarter’s USB output is rated at 5 Volts and 2.1 Amps.

Optional MagSafe car adapter

If you’ll be using the Quarter on a regular basis, you might want to get an optional MagSafe car adapter to recharge the device on the go. This gives you a piece of mind knowing you’ll always have juice to run for the full business day (hello, wall huggers!).

Despite the fact that the in-car charger sports the MagSafe adapter on one end, you cannot charge your MacBook with it as it was designed solely with the Quarter in mind.

Wait, MagSafe charging?

So, how does Beaver manage to get away with using MagSafe technology given that Apple does not permit accessory makers to build MagSafe-enabled gear? To be perfectly honest, this is a million dollar question that might ultimately determine the Quarter’s fate in the marketplace.

Beaver is blunt about designing the device without Apple’s approval, using third-party MagSafe components. Knowing Apple owns exclusive patent rights to MagSafe for use with its own products, I hope the Quarter won’t get pulled.

That would be quite a shame because the Quarter is a reliable and quality product. The project founder tells me they took the risk and built the Quarter after reaching out to Apple and receiving no response whatsoever.

Beaver is not alone in this as a couple other MagSafe-based accessories have been announced. “Also we are still trying to get license right now,“ says Beaver.

At any rate, Beaver could have worked around MagSafe restrictions by equipping the Quarter with a USB Type-C connector because USB-C can handle up to 100W. Maybe the company has licensed MagSafe from Apple or found a way around Apple’s patents?

Time will tell…

Smart circuitry to protect your devices

To achieve its notable charge/discharge efficiency whilst protecting your devices, the Quarter incorporates a TI chip from analog semiconductor company O2Micro, which provides protection agains overheating, short circuit and current overload.

The accessory recognizes your connected device and adjusts its output current for safety and optimal battery life. Beaver also doubled the core battery voltage from the normal 3.7 to 7.4 Volts.

Final thoughts

Having used dozens of external battery packs, I can safely say that the Quarter is very competitive. Tired of constantly searching and waiting at the nearest power outlet to charge your phone? Not happy with your current mobile juice pack?

If so, I’d say you couldn’t go wrong with the Quarter. Though just slightly bulky, it can easily slip straight into your pocket or a bag and works as advertised. And with fast MagSafe charging, the Quarter has a slight edge over most other battery packs.

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Since the device and not the battery decides how much power is drawn for recharging I can’t believe these fast charging claims. Even with Qualcoms QuickCharge technology you can’t charge your device to 100% this fast. Every iOS devices has a maximum mAH value for charging, for example for the iPhone 6 or 6S it’s about 1150mah. The device can’t draw more than this for charging. Therefore i highly doubt this is true.

Thanks for the heads-up, I mixed up the numbers. Made the changes to reflect that it took about half an hour to charge an iPhone 6s and a little over two hours to fully recharge an iPhone 6 Plus

Johannes Mertens

Still this would be only on third of the time it normally takes to fully charge an iPhone 6s. I just can’t see how this could be true technology wise. It doesn’t work like that. You can’t just throw lots of power at your device and it loads 300% faster.

Morgan Freeman

Exactly. Even if you had 50,000 amps on tap, your device’s circuitry would limit it’s rate of draw.

Leguro

LOL

Elias Chao

The non-aligned ports are really bothering me.

Boaz van Veen

So did you get paid to write this review? You cant charge a device faster then it accepts, unless you change something in the iphone itself. But its not going to be healthy to your device as something will start to smoke.
This kickstarter is a scam.

Timothy

It seems to me everyone (iDB included) has misunderstood Beaver’s claim: on their website, they say that “Quarter takes up enough power to charge an iPhone in 15 minutes,” meaning that Quarter takes 15 minutes to charge to that level via MagSafe, not that it will charge an iPhone in that time!

Johannes Mertens

He states that his 6s got charged from zero to 100% in half an hour.
EDIT: Nevermind he deleted it. But you can read the read the original text in my other comment.

Timothy

The article was edited after I posted my comment. It originally said that Beaver claimed that it could completely charge an iPhone 5s in 15 minutes.

Johannes Mertens

He also stated that the tested it with his 6s and it charged from zero to 100% in 30 minutes. This is impossible and I wouldn’t trust this review. EDIT: you can still read the original text in my other comment.

Leguro

I feel awkward just reading this.

Timothy

Sorry, can you explain? In the original draft of the article, they said that Quarter could fully charge an iPhone in 15 minutes, which is false. What the creators claim is that “Using the standard MacBook charger, within 15 minutes, Quarter can take up enough power to charge an iPhone 5S,” not that it can charge the phone in such a short time.

Johannes Mertens

These claims were removed from the article. Originally it stated that with this battery he was able to fully charge his 6s in 30 minutes. I think the mistake here is that the author missunderstood what the battery he reviewed does and didn’t verify or test it and just went for it.

chachi acola

In other words the author appears to have composed an article with little thought or attention to the facts. I’m sure regular readers are not surprised by this.